Who

Unplayable Classics: Balance of Power

This is a brief review that will appear in next month’s PTD
Magazine. Thanks to PTD for graciously allowing me to
pre-publish it here.

We’ve all seen that guy. The one out on the dance floor, doing that shuffly
dance guys do. The guy is convinced of his own savoir-faire. He’s convinced
he’s talented. He’s convinced he’s irresistible. To everyone else in the room,
however, he looks like a clumsy, embarassing dork.

In the world of computer games, that guy’s name is “Chris Crawford.”

Crawford was the author of a number of fair to middling games in the 1980s.
The most notable aspect of his games it that he is willing to tell you, in
soul-crushing detail, exactly how brilliant he thinks they were, in various
media outlets, books, and articles. Somehow the fact that most of his games
aren’t actually any fun to play has managed to elude the man for over 20
years now.

Balance of Power, for various platforms, is yet another Crawford game that
takes someone else’s great idea and makes it boring. The idea of a superpower
game of brinksmanship, risking prestige and war, had already been done right
by SSI and Bruce Ketchledge in their gripping game Geopolitique 1990.
Crawford took this basic idea and added a few things: an arguably better user
interface, more minor nations and random events, and an insufferably preachy
tone (“We do not reward failure,” the game lectures you when you lose, which
is clearly true, since I was never rewarded for the epic failure of purchasing
it). Every moment spent with the game is a moment you miss doing something
more entertaining, such as clipping your toenails.

If you hate yourself and your life, you can subject yourself to Crawford’s
java-based beta of “Balance of Power: 21st Century”at his web site,
storytron.com. The graphics and user
interface aren’t as good as the original game, but to make up for that, it’s
even less fun.

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition by Mindscape. No score given for this
game: We do not reward failure.